


Better Luck Is For People Who Learn

by Astr



Series: AU-gust 2020 [24]
Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anger, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, F/M, Guns, M/M, Not Beta Read, Private Investigators, This is the shitty first draft y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:01:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26081587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astr/pseuds/Astr
Summary: AU-gust Prompt. 24. Private investigator au.-Scott and Sara Ryder have taken up the mantle of Ryder P.I 's. So if course they go for the biggest badass job they can.
Relationships: Jaal Ama Darav/Female Ryder | Sara, Male Ryder | Scott/Reyes Vidal
Series: AU-gust 2020 [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1853722
Kudos: 2





	Better Luck Is For People Who Learn

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in daze at two AM, so who knows if it's any good or not!

"You have come so far, for such puny, insignificant worms. Your luck ends today."

Scott snarled and tugged at his restraints, lunging and straining as the monster held a gun to his unconscious sister's head. 

"Let her go you fucking piece of shit!!”

He tried tilting his chair but it was bolted to the ground, he tried screaming and snarling louder, hoping, praying, that someone would notice. The creature before him showed no emotion. None. Not amusement or derision or disgust, nothing to show this was in any way some event, not just a normal, everyday occurrence. Scott really, truly realized, at that moment, exactly how and why the Kett gang were so powerful, so feared.

They simply didn't care.

Three weeks ago, if you asked him why, he wouldn't have been able to tell you. Maybe it was the uniformity. Maybe it was the allegations of brainwashing. Maybe it was the immense violence wherever they went. 

All he had known then was that breaking in and getting the real details on the Kett was the job that would have him and Sarah retiring early. No one else would touch it and he didn't stop to think that there may have been a huge, terrible reason for that.

It didn't hurt that the Angaran boys were so damn pretty. Hell, Sarah netted herself a boyfriend pretty much immediately. Tall. Sensitive. Sweet. Voice that made him  _ long _ and  _ yearn _ for shit. It was weird and endearing and creepy all at once, but Jaal seemed to care about Sarah so it was fine. She was a big girl (seven minutes older too as she always reminded him) and she could take care of herself.

Plus they were both PI's. He knew the warning signs just as much as she did and he could see them clearer outside the relationship. Thus far there were none. Jaal was genuinely a nice man, who loved Sarah Ryder deeply. Hell, Scott started up a little savings account for the inevitable wedding. He was happy for her. He was bummed that he didn't get a sexy Angaran man, but that was okay. He was used to being alone.

Then he'd met his own "someone" as Sarah liked to put it in that saccharine sweet voice of hers, teasing him when he'd confided his feelings to her. Their go-between with the Angaran Resistance groups was a fence by the name of Reyes Vidal. Code name Shena, which he gleefully informed Scott was the Angaran word for "mouth," and laughed when Scott had involuntarily mewled at the thought. 

Despite his better judgement, Scott fell hard. He knew it couldn't last. He knew that men like Reyes didn't just fall for nerdy twinks like him. But knowing that gave him the power to just… enjoy while it lasted. 

And if it helped him get the intel they needed? Well, that would just be a bonus. Work and pleasure all in one for however blissfully long he could let himself be happy.

That wasn't long enough. Being what he was, and doing what he did for a living, Scott was a master at finding out little secrets. He had a way of feeling out lies, of putting his curiosity aside and hunting for truths, painful as they may be, or even little as they may be. It was the job. Meant he never held a boyfriend for more than a week too.

So it was with Reyes. Scott knew he was a fence. Scott knew he rarely obtained anything in strictly legal manners. Scott knew he was far more than he let on.

Scott hadn't known he'd been behind the Collective. Scott hadn't known he'd been the man to quietly "suggest" that Sloane Kelly be taken out of the picture. Sure, turf wars caused tragedy. But this had been nothing short of cold and calculating removal.

Was she dead? Scott didn't want to know. If only for plausible deniability. Reyes broke down (or did one hell of a job acting) and claimed he hadn't wanted Scott to see him differently.

It made Scott pause. He didn't, really, but that was only because he didn't let anyone in. Didn't trust or give his heart or believe that anyone was truly pure in their intentions. Sarah called him a pessimist. He insisted it kept him safe and sane. Sometimes he wished he could turn that off. 

Like when he watched Reyes walk away, and he simply couldn't believe the man felt any genuine way about the whole situation.

Now, in the basement of an empty storage facility, Scott was faced with what real, true uncaring looked like, and it was horrifying. 

They thought no one would be there. They thought that there was enough new dissension in the ranks that they could slip in, take incriminating pictures, and be on their way to a massive "not-government" funded early retirement.

But of course, the Kett had other plans. Archon, the leader of this faction, had been waiting. Had shot them with tranquilizer shit the moment they had entered his space.

And now he had a gun to Sarah's blindfolded, captive head, and Scott knew in the pit of his stomach that he was about to watch his twin sister die. 

_ Denial _ . This wasn't happening. It was a bad dream and he'd wake up and if he was lucky they hadn't even taken this job yet.

_ Anger _ . The bonds were cutting into his already bruised body. He didn't give a fuck. Maybe he could slip through with the blood. He could just tip himself out of the chair, through the steel cables binding him. He could murder this monster with his bare hands, tearing him apart piece by piece. He had never felt rage like this but it didn't matter.

_ Bargaining _ . "Please take me! I'll do anything please just don't-”

_ Depressio- _

Bang.

_ Denial. Anger. Denial. Anger. Denial. Denial. Denial. _

No no no no no no

No no

No 

No

_ No _

…

~~Acceptance~~ **_Fury_**.

Humans, under the right stressors, are capable of what is known as hysterical strength. This is what allows mothers to lift cars off of children, what gives stranded hikers the ability to pull themselves out of literal rocks and hard places, what leads to legends of superpowers and heroes.

This is what allows a mere human man to rip a chair and its above-regulation bolts out of heavy-duty cement and dive headlong towards an alien monster that just shot his sister. Allows him to all but obliterate the creature with the gun, coming out of it soaked in blood and starting to feel the burning inside of his hysterical body.

The X-rays later show he breaks his own legs and spine in several places because of this.

He is told he may never walk again. His punishment for freeing himself from one chair is being forever confined to another.

But his sister lives.

Without brain damage, even, she lives.

It was a one in seven billion coincidence, that the gun misfired, experts said, causing the bullet to become stuck in the chamber.

He doesn't care about the odds. She is alive. She is healthy. She can marry her sexy and sweet Angaran boyfriend (whose mother immediately adopts the Ryder twins) in a courtroom with a handful of witnesses because she's pretty sure she's pregnant with how they've been going at it since The Incident and Jaal wants to "do the right thing" as Alec Ryder would have put it (and it seems shotgun weddings run in the family).

He decides maybe he should stop being a pessimist (starting with begrudgingly acknowledging that he is one). He makes calls. He pulls together a small portion of the massive amount of money they've been given by their employers, the government, random people thanks to a mysterious crowdfunding campaign, and sends Sarah and Jaal on a bitchin honeymoon. He buys them a house with room to grow (which he gets written on a plaque in the entryway). He gets himself a physical therapist and a head full of determination that he will recover, dammit.

Scott sees Reyes fleetingly, in crowds, and never manages to catch him until he breaks down and calls. The number still works.

He finds out in the first two minutes that Reyes and the Collective were behind the crowdfunding campaign. He forgives and apologizes and promises to give them an honest chance, if Reyes promises honesty period. Turns out a guy like Reyes is more than capable of falling stupidly hard for a nerdy twink like Scott because they're moving in together before the newlyweds are back from the honeymoon.

Scott can't complain. He can't turn off his PI powers, but Reyes actually seems sincere. No more secrets.

Until a month later and Reyes has managed not only buy a ring without Scott's knowing, but get it sized and engraved.

He says yes. Fuck it. If Sarah can have Tenderheart, he can have Han Solo. 

It isn't happily ever after. But it is happy. And it is ever after.


End file.
